


in secret (between the shadow and the soul)

by ticketybye



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Established Relationship, Fluff, I Don't Even Know, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Intimacy, Late at Night, Light and Darkness Yin and Yang yadda yadda yadda, M/M, Punctuation and sentence structure all over the place on purpose, Self-Worth Issues, Sharing a Bed, Sort Of, This poem is overused in this fandom but do I care? No, Touching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-21
Updated: 2019-08-21
Packaged: 2020-09-23 10:36:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20338741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ticketybye/pseuds/ticketybye
Summary: Like most, if not all, demons, Crowley likes the dark.





	in secret (between the shadow and the soul)

_I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,_  
_or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off._  
_I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,  
_ _in secret, between the shadow and the soul._

Like most, if not all, demons, Crowley likes the dark.

Amongst the many consequences of falling from Grace, light sensitivity is one of the most noticeable, and the one that impacts his daily life the most.

He copes. He is grateful for the gloomy London weather, and for his dark glasses whenever the sun, dreadful orb, peeks out from behind the clouds. Grateful for the short winter days, grateful for his pitch-black bedroom at night.

Grateful, most of all, for the angel lying beside him in bed, who has not glowed – as angels tend to do – since Crowley has told him about his problem.

At night, they reach out blindly and yet have no trouble finding each other, hands touching hands and faces, cheeks rubbing against cheeks, fingertips stroking, grazing, scratching skin.

There are many things Crowley, like most demons, likes to do in the dark. His absolute favourite, however, is to take a round, soft face in his hands, lean in and kiss it all over, where kissing means letting his lips rest on different parts of it for seconds at a time and inhaling. What his eyes cannot see in the dark, his lips and nose know all too well by now: the peachy fuzziness of cheekbones; fading cologne and tangy peppermint toothpaste; the heat and longing that hide in the corners of a mouth.

He wishes himself a naked, blind, underground animal, making a home in the nooks and swells of Aziraphale’s body. Aziraphale is a creature of the light, songbird to his mole; he is vulnerable in the dark. There is tentativeness in his touches, a hint of fear in the way he grabs Crowley’s hands, lacing their fingers together. Crowley’s mouth writes reassurances on his face, his neck, his chest. _You are safe_, it spells out. _I will guide you_. He wants to teach Aziraphale the wonders of having no face and no name. He wants the two of them to get to know each other all over again, by touch alone. _What’s your name? _his tongue asks. Aziraphale’s name is a shaky exhale, ten fingers sinking into Crowley’s back. Crowley is fluent in the language of touch; Aziraphale is a quick study.

Crowley wishes, though never out loud, that Aziraphale would never lay eyes on him again. Aziraphale always wants to see him. _Turn on the light_, Aziraphale will say, dizzy and desperate, buried deep inside him, walking the tightrope of pleasure. _Turn it on, I want to see you_. Often, during the day, Crowley catches Aziraphale staring. There was a time, in the beginning, when Aziraphale would look away immediately, his cheeks turning a charming shade of pink. Not anymore: now he keeps his eyes fixed on Crowley, tells him, without exception and without hesitation, _you are beautiful_. But Crowley is not beautiful, and when he hears the words his scales fight to break his skin open, beg him to slither under a rock a book a shelf a jar _anything, please_. Aziraphale’s fond gaze grabs him by the tail, holds him up for the world to see, and it is in his nature to escape exposure and seek the shade.

He cannot deny Aziraphale anything, let alone himself, and so he lets himself be seen. But if only Aziraphale could understand this – in the dark, he can feign himself pliant, gentle, _bearable_. He loses the fangs and the claws; he becomes all the parts of himself that cannot cause harm. Much as he loves looking at Aziraphale, he would give it up gladly if it meant to be known only as this version of himself. 

In the night, Crowley knows words that are unthinkable by day. Sometimes, not often, the two of them will talk, their whispers hot, humid air against naked skin. Only when strictly necessary. Only when Crowley’s love threatens to burst at the seams, and he has no choice but to mouth it in between kisses, face hidden in Aziraphale’s hair or cheek or neck, _I love you_, a kiss, _I love_, a kiss, _love_, a kiss, _love_, two, three kisses, he gets carried away and loses count,_ love you_.

Always, when he does, he hears Aziraphale struggling not to laugh, huffing and puffing and giggling. In the dark, Aziraphale speaks and laughs as if he’s afraid he’ll wake someone up. Scratch that – he lives like that _by day_, apologising and shrinking and constantly watching his step. Crowley hates it, longs for Aziraphale’s unrestrained, hearty laugh, the kind that forces him to bare his teeth, throw his head back and clutch his stomach. A rare, crystalline sound, like wedding bells, like a call to prayer or war.

But Aziraphale tells him he loves him loud and clear, always; it’s the one time he will not compromise. “You silly little snake,” he says, cupping Crowley’s face with both hands, kissing him fully and hungrily as if he wants to swallow him whole, “I love you,” he says, lips against quivering lips. A transparent, liquid sound, a different kind of light. It ripples through Crowley’s body until it’s all he can hear, until _somebody loved _is all he is and all he ever was.

In the dark, he’s not fallen. There is nothing to remind him of himself – no reptile eyes, no pointy shoulders, no bony limbs. In fact, as far as he touches and smells and tastes and hears, he may well be one with the soft body that envelops him. These tree trunk arms, his own arms; these cushiony thighs framing his hips, his own thighs; these lips his lips and this chin his chin and these hands his hands, down to the smallest quiver of this enormous, all-encompassing beating heart. Yes, this bass drum, which may well be thumping its ancient song inside his own ribcage, close as they are. He tells Aziraphale once (there are so many things one is free to say in the dark): he tells him, an impatient growl, “I wish I could crawl into you.” It doesn’t quite get the point across, but it’s close enough. Aziraphale pulls him as close as physics will allow, damn physics and all the blasted human sciences, letting flesh disappear inside flesh, and tells him, “I would let you.”

Crowley knows, hears in Aziraphale’s unsteady voice, that Aziraphale scares himself when he thinks such thoughts; but brave as he is, his heavenly warrior, he speaks them into existence nonetheless.

Aziraphale is not a dark thing. He is everything but. He was born of the light and to the light he returns, over and over again, as the day breaks.

Crowley is not a light thing. He is everything but. He was cast out of the light, and to the dark he returns, over and over again, as the night falls.

But all through the day, Aziraphale latches onto the spark of light flashing in Crowley’s smiling eyes, finding himself, finding the stuff they are made of is one and the same.

And all through the night, Crowley latches onto the spot of darkness in Aziraphale’s chest, losing himself willingly into an open-armed black hole.

They are one. What the light has divided, the darkness reunites.

_I love you because I know no other way_

_than this: where I does not exist, nor you,_  
_so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,  
_ _so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep._

**Author's Note:**

> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ idk pals, it was 4 am and I felt cheese in this chilis


End file.
